Based on a qualitative study of Zimbabwean migrants based in South Africa, who regularly remitted goods and money to Zimbabwe between 2010 and 2020, this paper suggests that at a local level, ...remittances alleviated poverty with very limited if any transformation of the political economy at the national level. Such remittances promoted consumerism without sustainable investment that can structurally transform the economy. In addition, the dependence on remittances entrenches the culture of migration at the local level, which also contributes to or promotes ethno-tribal fissiparity. In rethinking diaspora remittances in the post-Mugabe era, it is advanced that the seemingly intractable economic and political quagmire in Zimbabwe must be resolved to inspire confidence in the diaspora to pull remittances together for a national socio-economic cause and not local-level band-aid accomplishments which remittances currently do.
This paper examines the extent to which Zimbabwe's economic crisis compelled its citizens, particularly the youth, to engage in urban informality in order to make a living. In addition to this, the ...Zimbabwean youth in question have also turned to political activism, which has taken a complex trajectory in that it has assumed oppositional politics as well as politics of patronage. The former hope that a change in the political dispensation in Zimbabwe would lead to a change in the economic fortunes of the country. The latter feast on gains of political patronage for as long as it lasts. The central contribution of this paper therefore, is a nuanced illumination of the unemployment-urban informality-political activism nexus in an African context.
This paper uses insights gained from a qualitative study of informal cross border actors on selected Southern African Development Community (SADC) borders to argue for the decolonisation of these ...borders. It is asserted that, although SADC citizens enjoy a 90-day free visa in member states, this should not be simplistically taken to mean that there are “open borders” and free movement of persons in region. The recognition that a border “open” to formal actors may be closed to informal cross border actors based on issues of power and class is the foundation for the decolonisation of these borders, a process which should articulate to the regional integration project in the region. Such a decolonisation of borders should recognise in policy and/or border management regimes all cross-border actors, especially non-state actors, who are criminalized and rendered invisible through cross border discourses and policies. This point is worth emphasizing, because most people who cross African borders may not be the formal actors such as multinational corporations (MNCs) and/or their proxies who are favoured by cross border policies, but ordinary people such as informal cross border traders and border citizens, who need decolonised borders for them to enjoy freedom of movement, rather than being depoliticized and relegated to the subaltern who cannot speak, let alone move.
Expanding Boundaries Laine, Jussi P; Moyo, Inocent; Changwe Nshimbi, Christopher
2021, 20201227, 2020, 2020-12-28, Letnik:
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eBook
This book challenges the common European notions about African migration to Europe and offers a holistic understanding of the current situation in Africa. It advocates a need to rethink Africa-Europe ...relations and view migration and borders as a resource rather than as sources of a crisis.
Migrant movement from Africa is often misunderstood and misrepresented as invasion caused by displacement due to poverty, violent conflict, and environmental stress. To control this movement and preserve national identities, the EU and its various member states resort to closing borders as a way of reinforcing their migration policies. This book aims to dismantle this stereotypical view of migration from Africa by sharing cutting-edge research from the leading scholars in Africa and Europe. It refutes the flawed narratives that position Africa as a threat to European societies, their economies, and security, and encourages a nuanced understanding of the root causes as well as the socioeconomic factors that guide the migrants’ decision-making. With chapters written in a concise style, this book brings together the migration and border studies in an innovative way to delve into the broader societal impacts of both. It also serves to de-silence the African voices in order to offer fresh insights on African migration – a discourse dominated hitherto by the European perspective.
This book constitutes a valuable resource for research scholars and students of Border Studies, Migration Studies, Conflict and Security Studies, and Development Studies seeking specialisation in these areas. Written in an accessible style, it will also appeal to a more general public interested in gaining a fuller perspective on the African reality.
Regarded not only as a line that separates South Africa and Zimbabwe to underline the interiority and exteriority of the two countries, as well as to control and manage migration and immigration, ...Beitbridge border effectively plays out the immigration debates and dynamics at the heart of the nation-state of South Africa. Based on a qualitative study of how migrants from other African countries are treated at this border and in Johannesburg inner city, we suggest that the harassment suffered by the migrants at the hands of border officials, including immigration officials, the police and army, is indicative of a larger dynamic that exists in the centre, which is represented by Johannesburg inner city. Such bordering and rebordering practices at the border and at the centre reflect negatively on the spirit and letter of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional integration project.
In the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, there is the discourse that trade facilitation programmes have opened borders for actors like informal cross-border traders. Examples used ...in this narrative include the African Continental Free Trade Area. This article takes a different view and asserts that these state-driven initiatives were limited because regionalism as SADC institutional project was not in sync with the everyday regionalization processes. Such processes demonstrate the fluidity and multidimensionality of regional integration, which transcend state-centric paradigms and this invokes an alternative explanatory framework and understanding of the bottom-up process of regional integration in an African setting.
The setting up by the African Union of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which should govern matters relating to, inter alia, trade in goods and services, investment, trade ...facilitation, intellectual property rights, and competition policy is a step in the right direction. However, this paper argues that the limited inclusion of informal economy actors such as informal cross border traders (ICBTs) appears to undermine the potential of the AfCFTA as the architecture for inclusive socio-economic development in Africa. The paper advances the need for African countries to craft policies which are sensitive to and respond to the circumstances of ordinary people on the ground and not a wholesale application of policies such as neoclassical integration theory, the outcome of which deserts ordinary people. Such policies must be transcendental to the extent of being informed by views from the ground, which does not appear to be the case with the AfCFTA on the score of ICBTs.
The paper analysed the response and adaptation strategies of informal street traders to the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the City of uMhlathuze, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. A total of 30 ...informal street traders were interviewed using in-depth unstructured interviews as an instrument of data collection. Findings suggest that the informal street traders responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by breaking COVID-19 regulations to secure incomes as well as by depending on social grants and saving schemes to survive during the COVID-19 crisis. All these suggest the need for disaster preparedness on the part of the government and relevant stakeholders to protect the informal economy and its immediate beneficiaries in times of crisis like COVID-19. This is pertinent because the informal economy plays an important socioeconomic developmental role for many people living in urban South Africa.
This study was devised to examine the pattern of disturbance and reclamation by Tronox, which instigated a closure process for its Hillendale mine site in South Africa, where they recovered ...zirconium- and titanium-bearing minerals from 2001 to 2013. Restoring mined-out areas is of great importance in South Africa, with its ominous record of almost 6000 abandoned mines since the 1860s. In 2002, the government enacted the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (No. 28 of 2002) to enforce extracting companies to restore mined-out areas before pursuing closure permits. Thus, the trajectory of the Hillendale mine remains unstudied despite advances in the satellite remote sensing technology that is widely used in this field. Here, we retrieved a collection of Landsat-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) within the Google Earth Engine and applied the Detecting Breakpoints and Estimating Segments in Trend (DBEST) algorithm to examine the progress of vegetation transformation over the Hillendale mine between 2001 and 2019. Our results showed key breakpoints in NDVI, a drop from 2001, reaching the lowest point in 2009–2011, with a marked recovery pattern after 2013 when the restoration program started. We also validated our results using a random forests strategy that separated vegetated and non-vegetated areas with an accuracy exceeding 78%. Overall, our findings are expected to encourage users to replicate this affordable application, particularly in emerging countries with similar cases.
This paper explores the perception of indigenous communities towards the co-management framework and whether or not this empowered them to utilise their indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in the ...management and governance of the Protected Area (PA) in Okhahlamba-Drakensberg. IKS is excluded from the political systems of PA governance but this can be remedied through participation of indigenous communities in the agenda-setting around environmental management programmes. Indigenous community members should be co-managers at every level of the political power hierarchy of the PA if entrenched asymmetrical power relations are to be dismantled and replaced by meaningful partnership that transcends tokenistic normativity.
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